Driving a petrol Accord for the first time today, doing about 75mph in lane 3 passing a long line of slower moving traffic with all vehicles in my lane doing this speed. Motorbike weaves in behind me but for some reason doesn't pass, just sits there inches away from the bumper. I was aware I couldn't do any braking while he was there so decided to increase the gap between me and the car in front so I can slow gently if there's a problem.
Tapped the decelerate button on the cruise control and the automatic gearbox drops into 3rd gear with a jerk as the car slows and climbs an incline - motorbike misses the back of the car by inches (and only by a violent swerve on his part) and squeezes past with unpleasant gesticulations etc.
If he'd come off on the motorway there wouldn't be much left of him - and I suspect I'd be languishing in a police cell as it was technically my fault for slowing unexpectedly. Ironically, it had just been mentioned on the radio that Devon sees the highest rate of motorcycle fatalities in the country and I can well understand why!!
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and I suspect I'd be languishing in a police cell as it was technically my fault for slowing unexpectedly.
If he'd have run into the back of you, then it would have been his fault, not yours.
Rather than tailgating you the biker should have created his own safety gap around himself, and not have relied upon you to worry about what might happen if you stamped on the brakes for whatever reason.
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"... it was technically my fault for slowing unexpectedly."
Nope. There could be loads of reasons for you to do this and he (like any other road user) has to allow for this eventuality. For example, if someone had a tyre blowout beside you and swerved into your path, you'd have had to hit the brakes hard - from what you describe, there wouldn't have been an escape route so stopping would have been your only option. If he'd hit you, it would have been because he hadn't allowed enough stopping distance between himself and the vehicle in front, i.e. you.
Obviously he had good reflexes though ...
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andymc
Vroom, vroom - mmm, doughnuts ...
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>>I was aware I couldn't do any braking while he was there so decided to increase the gap between me and the car in front so I can slow gently if there's a problem.
Tapped the decelerate button on the cruise control and the automatic gearbox drops into 3rd gear with a jerk as the car slows and climbs an incline - >>
Slight contradiction there, why tap the decelerate button when you wanted to open the gap, why not simply put you foot down or tap the accelertae button? Or is that the point, that you were not used to the car >>Driving a petrol Accord for the first time >> ?
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>>If he'd come off on the motorway there wouldn't be much left of him - and I suspect I'd be languishing in a police cell as it was technically my fault for slowing unexpectedly. <<
I doubt that you'd be in a police cell. Any driver behind would say that there were no brake lights - your own story says that you were behaving reasonably.
The biker should not have been filtering at these speeds.
I stop filtering when the traffic gets to 20 - 30 MPH.
I've seen bikes filtering through dense 70MPH traffic at night - I think that's mad.
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Some bikers seem to forget that just because you can filter between traffic, you're not obliged to, particularly if it is flowing ok. Filtering at 30 between crawling traffic on a motorway is one thing, but weaving at 60 between traffic doing 45 in a 40 zone (as I saw some bloke doing today) is stupid.
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"Tapped the decelerate button on the cruise control and the automatic gearbox drops into 3rd gear with a jerk as the car slows and climbs an incline - >>
Slight contradiction there, why tap the decelerate button when you wanted to open the gap, why not simply put you foot down or tap the accelertae button? Or is that the point, that you were not used to the car >>Driving a petrol Accord for the first time >> ?"
OP - "I wanted to increase the distance between myself and the car in front" - doesn't that necessitate slowing down, hence the use of the decelerate button?
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Slight contradiction there, why tap the decelerate button when you wanted to open the gap, why not simply put you foot down or tap the accelertae button? Or is that the point, that you were not used to the car >>Driving a petrol Accord for the first time >> ?" OP - "I wanted to increase the distance between myself and the car in front" - doesn't that necessitate slowing down, hence the use of the decelerate button?
Doh, I read it wrongly, I thought he wanted to increase the distance between himself and the bike.
OK, so perhaps what he could have done is gently braked, the braked lights would have warned the biker where as the use of cruise to slow the car gave no such warning.
I dont condone the biker's road positioning by the way.
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